The Schwartz Report

Largest Windows 10 Migration Yet Is Set to Reach 400,000 Employees

Accenture has migrated nearly 75 percent of its 400,000 employees to Windows 10 and is on pace to complete the upgrade next year. It appears to be the largest known Windows 10 migration to date, Microsoft acknowledged this week.

It's not entirely surprising that Accenture has fast tracked its Windows 10 migration, considering it is the largest independent global IT consulting and systems integration firm and one of Microsoft's closest partners. Accenture also is the largest customer using Microsoft's OneDrive with 6 Petabytes of business data stored in the online cloud storage service, tied to Windows 10 and Office 365.

Besides the fact that the two are invested in their Avanade joint venture, both companies are working closely on a number of technology initiatives. Two prominent examples were Accenture's endorsement of Microsoft Teams when Microsoft launched it back in November and more recently their work together on advancing secure identities using blockchain, announced earlier this month.

Still, Accenture's migration is a remarkable example of an enterprise that has taken an aggressive posture toward upgrading so many employees in relatively short order. As Windows 10 reaches its two-year anniversary next month, upgrades are on the rise. But as reported by my colleague Kurt Mackie earlier this week, a survey by Adaptiva found just under half (46 percent) of respondents report having migrated 10 percent or less of their PCs and devices to Windows 10, while 41 percent of participants said they have plans to have 51 percent of more devices migrated to Windows 10 within the next year.

The Accenture migration is also noteworthy in that the company's workforce is four times the size of Microsoft's. Naturally, the push gives Accenture cover to say it eats its own -- and Microsoft's -- dogfood, to coin an old phrase. "Not only do we enable our people with the latest technology, we're also setting ourselves up to be a reference for the state of what's possible with Microsoft," Accenture Managing Director Brad Nyers said in a promotional video, embedded in Microsoft's announcement. "It's demonstrating to our clients that we can be a market leader in the adoption of Microsoft technology."

In addition to its massive Windows 10 migration, Accenture is making a big push with Office 365 and Microsoft's Enterprise Mobility + Security (EMS) service, which the company earlier this month ported to the Azure portal and implemented the Microsoft Graph APIs (as detailed in this month's Redmond magazine cover story).

In addition to showcasing its use of the new technology, Accenture CIO Andrew Wilson noted that 75 percent of its workforce are millennials. Both are key factors driving its own move to provide them with more modern experiences such as Microsoft Teams, which Wilson discussed at the November launch, and the ability to support BYOD, where EMS plays a key role.

"Managing the identity of the user, differentiating between enterprise and between personal use at the application and the data level, we can operate in both a mobile way and a secure way [without] disrupting the user experience at the same time," Wilson said in the above-mentioned video. "We believe we're at the very leading edge of keeping ourselves and our clients totally relevant."